- In-Depth Stories
- Web Stories
- Reviews
- News
- FC Lists
- Interviews
- Features
- FC SpecialsFC Specials
Romantic tragedies are mostly a hit-and-miss when it comes to its cinematic renditions. Even the best of stories about star-crossed lovers might end up leaving a sour after-taste, if the ending does not land well with audiences. There is a delicate balance between creating a relatable yet aspirational romance on screen that connects with the audiences until the whole story comes crashing down for the central couple. Tamil cinema has seen its fair share of romances that didn't have happy endings. Ahead of Rakshit Shetty and Rukmini Vasanth’s heartbreaking sequel Ezhu Kadal Thaandi- Side B or SSE 2, let’s have a look at some of our favourite heartbreakers from Tamil cinema.
Streaming on: YouTube
Maybe the most popular entry in the list, the impact that Gautham Menon’s glossy yet heartfelt romance had on this generation of film-goers is inexplicable, to say the least. The film centers around the romance between an aspiring filmmaker and his next door neighbor, who propels his creative journey as his artistic muse. There is heartache, romanticism and hope in the way Karthik and Jessy meet, fall in love and are forced to go about their separate ways, making each other wiser and better human beings in the process, albeit with a missing piece in their hearts that will remain vacant in each other’s absence.
Streaming on: SunNXT
This film often comes across a tone poem that was always meant to be a bittersweet tragedy. A childhood romance, a prickly wooing period and a catastrophic revelation. 3 is the ultimate melancholy love story that transcends any tangible, physical manifestations. This is the kind of movie where even the revelation of death opens us up to the intricacies of obsessive and selfless love.
Streaming on: SunNXT
Partly inspired by the premise of Christopher Nolan’s indie breakout hit Memento (2000), this desi reworking by director A R Muragadoss saw a man with short-term memory loss searching for his lover’s killer by means of body tattoos, descriptive diary entries and photographs as clues — even as the foreground took us on an escape with a story about two unlikely lovers. No love story can have the gravitas and innate tragic resonance of this tale where memory or lack of it thereof is used as a device to chart the film’s revenge film cliche machinations.
Streaming on: ZEE5
A freak accident. A psychotic revenge. A heart transplant. These seemingly bizarre plot elements come together in Vishnu Vardhan’s cathartic story about an easygoing man who transforms into a watchful guardian for a small child, as an ode to his love that survives in strange ways through the boy. This Arya and Trisha starrer is somber in its tonal variations at parts and delves into heavier themes in the latter half, but the central relationship remains the vessel through which Sarvam poses the question: how far would you go for your loved one?
Streaming on: YouTube
Another film that somehow utilised the traditionally contrived plot device of an abrupt tragedy that befalls the protagonists, not to accentuate the formulaic nature of storytelling but somehow to eschew sentimentalism in favour of novelty. The film which dealt with two couples, whose first encounters and gradual falling in love is treated with a reverence rare in mainstream films, also managed to capture a harsh predicament that somehow intertwined the fate of love and cosmic occurrences beyond human control.
Streaming on: ZEE5
Nobody who attained teenage in the 2000’s will be able to shake off the visceral impact this film had on the way they viewed love, heartbreak and life's purpose. This masterpiece is a meditation on the nature of true love and how one navigates the umpteen ways human nature can deal with tragedy that breaks you from within. Again from director Gautham Menon, this coming-of-age story somehow managed to be many things at once, not least a multi-generational love story that drew from life experiences and informed the contrasting ways in which love helps you define the kind of person you end up being in life. No list of this sort is complete without this tale of Surya’s transformation from an heartbroken youngster to a clear-headed adult, who finds his purpose through a loss that never stops hurting.
Streaming on: SunNXT, ZEE5
More a gangster drama by design, this film by actor- director Sasikumar cast relative newcomers at the time, Jai and Swathi Reddy (in her debut), to tell the story of a misplaced romance that was bound to be a tragedy from the onset. The film delves into the inner workings of gangs in Madurai but the love story remains to be the one aspect that worked as the central conflict of this brutal, unhinged film. In between all the bloodshed and gangster film tropes, you can't forget the naive but beautifully written love story between Azhagar and Thulasi and definitely not the “Kangal Irandal” song that remains an indelible mark in Tamil film music to this day.
Streaming on: YouTube
Long before tragic romances became a thing with the multiplex generation, Kamal Haasan and Sridevi broke the hearts of millions with their iconic teaming up in Balu Mahendra’s relentless tragedy Moondram Pirai. The classic saw Kamal Haasan play a school teacher, who takes it upon himself to rescue a girl suffering from retrograde amnesia trapped in a brothel, only to end up falling in love with her in the process. Maybe, the most merciless film when it comes to the way director Balu Mahendra decides to explore the facet of memory and genuine love that goes beyond mere recognition or validation. It's as painful an end as any film can have!
Streaming on: Disney+ Hotstar
Another tragic romance camouflaged within the genre beats of a coming-of-age story, this is one film that can elicit contradictory responses from the viewer. Love traverses some uncomfortable places in this Selvaraghavan film. Ravi Krishna and Sonia Agarwal play two unlucky youngsters, who succumb to their familial backgrounds and external barriers that prevent them from uniting, leading to a truly confounding climax that has managed to divide audience responses even to this day.
Karthi made his film debut as the leading man in this oftentimes controversial film directed by Ameer. The film got its lead actress Priyamani the Best Actress at the National Film Awards that year and was also unanimously acclaimed by critics and audiences as an important work in contemporary Tamil cinema. The film, noted for its one-of-a-kind rustic, problematic moral gaze is an experiment in character writing. The way Ameer conceived the eventual tragedy of the romance is one of the boldest yet irksome endings in Tamil films to date and continues to surprise with its downright nihilistic vision and conviction of execution.